The Science of Psionics
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Original Source: “The Science of Psionics,” by John Campbell, Editor, Astounding Science Fiction, February 1956.
This is going to be an article about articles; I'm presenting you, the readers, with one of my own personal editorial problems, because it is, essentially, ours yours and mine yet I alone can take immediate action on it. I am the executive officer in this system; you're the electorate. You determine the policy; I have the problem of trying to find out what you've determined and then carrying it out.
We published a letter signed T. O. Jothun in the September 1955 issue; the name was a protected pen name, as many realized. The letter discussed experiments involving the use of high-frequency radio radiations and ESP, and suggested an article on the subject.
I have seen the article; unfortunately, the author has interesting material, but, like many another scientist, can't use the special technology of a different field of human activity. He's about as competent a writer of articles as he is a surgeon; no one expects every man to be an expert surgeon, and there is, equally, no reason to expect every man to be a trained and expert writer.
However, that letter drew more reader response than any other item in the magazine. It's clear that there is a very strong and dynamic interest in the type of material Jothun offered.
So be it; Jothun is not, by any means, the only source. There is, in fact, far more such activity taking place than is realized; the problem is that there is no medium of communication by which the workers in that field can communicate to each other, or with the public.
No standard scientific journal can handle the material, because it isn't science. It isn't physics, chemistry, medicine, electronics. It's easy to go down the entire list of sciences and define it by exclusion; it isn't any of them.
One of the great problems of the whole ESP-psionics field is that it can, to date, be defined only by exclusion and that leads to the inevitable difficulty of the confusion of all non-science. The problem is perhaps best expressed by the answer sometimes given to the famous “Alice” conundrum, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Answer: Because you can’t ride either one like a bicycle.
Now that answer is unarguably true. Beyond question, a raven and a writing desk do share that characteristic. Of course everything in the universe that isn't a bicycle shares the characteristic too, including canoes, spaniel dogs, atomic bombs and fountain pens. When you define something by exclusion, you immediately confuse it with everything else that is excluded from the category.
The consequence is that since frauds, charlatans, crackpots, and fools do not use honest, scientific methods of work, they belong in the category excluded from “honest scientific researchers.” So, however, do Buddha, Jesus, and President Eisenhower. Both groups do not belong in the category of “honest scientific researchers.” Both groups use methods other than those used by physicists in their laboratory work, for example.
Yet it is evident from that strong response that you, the readers, want to know what honest non-scientific research is being done in the field of psionics, and what is being accomplished.
I can obtain articles reporting on such work; the work exists, and Dr. Rhine, at Duke University, is far from being alone in the field. Also, he is not working in the most interesting area the area of the psionic machine.
The problem, however, is going to be exceedingly hard to handle. First, the very statement “psionic machine” will call forth strong reactions of denial from both the sincere mystics, who are doing their own research in the field of ESP, and hold strongly that it is an essentially human nonmechanical thing, and from the physicists, who hold the “psionic” concept is nonsense. The mystic detests the idea of a psionic machine; the physicist is outraged at the idea of a psionic machine.
But the problem is to bridge the gap between the purely-human detector—the mystic’s approach and the pure-machine-as-we-know-it, the physicist’s approach. What is needed is a reproducible machine that can detect a nonphysical phenomenon which is also a psionic phenomenon.
When the photoelectric cell replaced the observer's eye, it could be calibrated and reproduced. When the camera replaced the astronomer’s eye, angular measurements could attain a new order of precision.
I can obtain and run such articles. They are appropriate to the essential function of science fiction that of speculative consideration of those phenomena of the Universe which have not yet been fully understood, fully worked out. But there is powerful resistance to the psionic ideas. It must, necessarily, look like mysticism and because it is defined almost entirely by negation even Dr. Rhine defines it by negation; extrasensory perception specifically holding that it is not sensory we will be handling material that is in the same category with frauds, charlatans, and the work of the great religious and political leaders; it won't be honest scientific research, because it lies outside of and beyond known science.
The work is being done; there are psionic machines that have produced incredible results. It is the necessary characteristic of all such work that the results are clearly impossible. The entire field is full of palpable nonsense, claims of things that are obviously illogical, things that anyone who knows anything about the basic laws of science can immediately recognize as obvious impossibilities.
For example, typical of several psionic-machine devices and claims is that the machine makes it possible to analyze a mineral without the mineral. That they can determine the chemical composition of a mineral by using the machine on a photograph of the mineral. This is obvious and arrant nonsense.
So it is. It is also the consistent report turned in by entirely separate groups working on psionic machines in different parts of the world.
We're going to have to face a very simple fact before we can start discussing articles on the researches being done toward psionic machine the fact is this: Unless the machine does something known to be impossible, there is no evidence of a new field of research, is there?
The physicist wants the machine to make sound, scientific, logical sense to behave in a sensible manner, and do sensible, reasonable things. When it does do something sensible and understandable he explains that what it has done is nothing new. He can do the same thing by physical means; it is clear, therefore, he says, that there is no advantage in this cumbersome contraption.
But if it does something he knows cannot be done by any conceivable application of any conceivable law of science . then he denies that the effect is real, because he knows it is impossible.
If the psionic machine can analyze minerals and if you're interested, you might look up United States Patent No. 2,482,773, issued to T. G. Hieronymus when they are placed in the machine itself, it is doing something that a lot of known mechanisms can accomplish. Therefore, there is no point in fussing with it, is there?
But if what the machine does is clearly impossible, no one but a fool would try doing it, or believe it was not fraudulent if he saw it demonstrated.
Very well, gentlemen, how will you have it? The only possible proof of a new discovery is a crucial experiment. A crucial experiment requires accomplishing an act, Q, which cannot be accomplished by any previously known methods, but can be demonstrated by the new method.
But this means that proof of discovery requires the demonstration of the clearly impossible! Only doing the “clearly impossible” can constitute full proof of discovery.
Therefore, if you want articles on the work that has been done on psionic machines and ESP amplifiers gentlemen, work has been done. There are reports honestly worked-up reports of much amateur work and success with such devices. I can obtain and publish such material.
But I must state clearly beforehand that the statements made in such articles will be claims of having accomplished things that any intelligent modern man knows are clear, pure nonsense impossibilities. Precisely; that is the necessary condition for proof of discovery.
What is the difficulty? Why, if such work can be demonstrated, can't it be accepted in a more conventional framework?
The answer is that it is not demonstration that is lacking, but explanation.
Assume for a moment that T. G. Hieronymous is correct in his statement that he can analyze a chemical compound, by the use of his fully described machine, by using a photograph of the material. Let us suppose that he demonstrates this phenomenon before a group of chemists.
It won't work for all of them when they try it. Some get results; some do not. Hieronymus can do it but he may not have a fully integrated theory to explain why he gets results. That results in the actual present situation; Hieronymus has a United States Patent, because the Patent Office requires only that you specify exactly how to do it. You are not asked to explain why it works. The Patent Office was designed to aid the Nation's economy, and a businessman need not know why a device works. He need only know how to make it work and be able to predict whether it will work or what percentage of success he can expect.
A mechanism that works fifteen per cent of the time is entirely satisfactory for a business venture, remember. A production line with ninety per cent rejects isn't ideal, of course, but it can be highly profitable well worthwhile. I believe some of Western Electric Company's exceedingly special, and exceedingly critical tubes show rejection rates as high or higher than that. The ten per cent or so that do work do something so valuable that they more than pay for the failures.
The Patent Office, then, unlike a scientific journal, doesn't demand that the inventor explain why his device functions. That's part of the fact that you can not patent a Law of Nature.
But science simply does not accept that a thing works, nor is it satisfied with how it works. It cannot be accepted until a logical bridge has been built from known theoretical structures to the new concept.
Einstein built a logical-mathematical bridge to the concepts of relativity and predicted the “impossible” phenomenon of light “falling” in a gravitational field. Because he could build a logical bridge, his work was accepted. If, instead, Einstein had studied solar eclipse pictures, and insisted that the stars moved when the Sun was near them, he would have been laughed out of sight.
He would have been wrong, of course; the stars do not move. But his observations of the shift of star images would have been dismissed with him. The effect is, after all, so small that it can be detected only with the greatest difficulty; the errors of measurement are nearly as great as the effect being measured. It would certainly be easier to dismiss the phenomenon as measurement error, rather than to accept that, somehow, the stars were being shifted by the passage of the Sun and seek a whole new cosmology based on that!
Of course, since Einstein actually provided the whole new cosmology, all neatly worked out for them they could accept it.
A while back, I mentioned in these pages the idea of the individual who could see ultraviolet in a world of people who could not. Let us suppose we have a population wherein about one individual in one thousand has the ability to see ultraviolet. One of these individuals, experimenting with devices, finds that it is possible to detect the nature of a mineral by the UV fluorescence of the mineral when it is struck by X rays. That is it is possible for one who can see UV.
But he doesn't know what UV is; he simply knows by experience that he can see a difference. About one in a thousand who investigate his claims finds that he's absolutely right but can't explain it either.
Because, we must assume, the level of the science at that time has not discovered UV radiation; hasn't invented photography and hasn't invented photoelectric cells.
It doesn't matter a bit that he's right; he can't explain it, nor can he explain why some individuals can and others cannot do it. Those who cannot outnumber those who can nine hundred ninety-nine to one; he is, necessarily, in the spot of saying “All nine hundred ninety-nine of you are incompetent; only he is competent,” but not being able to explain to the nine hundred ninety-nine what he means by “competent.”
I published an editorial on “Organic Detectors” a while back. The reading and investigating I've done indicates that organisms, living entities, are necessary as part of the psionic machine, so far. Usually, the human being who is doing the work is also the detector, though a mechanism is used to amplify the phenomenon he is to detect. After all, a telescope can't see anything; it's capable of amplifying the image, however, so that a sensitive human being can see it.
But the evidence that's come in so far seems to show that most human beings are not sensitive enough to be able to use the crude amplifier devices so far developed. Some work done in England appeared to have a magnificent line on the problem, because photographic plates were able to detect the results. Dozens of different operators had used the machine successfully, though special adjustments had to be made for individual operators.
Things seemed to be running beautifully . . . until it was found that the photographic plates did not work unless their darkroom technician handled them. It wasn't that he marked them, put images on them, or anything of the sort; it was simply that he in some unanalyzable, inexplicable manner hypersensitized them so that other men could use them. Unfortunately, no other individual having that characteristic has been found.
Experimenting in the field is, in consequence, most uncertain. You may duplicate the mechanism that worked magnificently for A... and find it does nothing whatever. Why?
What do you want, a research project, or to build something according to a fully-worked-out engineering diagram? If the latter, you can amuse yourself building a television receiver, or an electric motor, or a gasoline engine.
If you want true frontier research, you can try the psionic machine experiments. Being frontier work, it probably won't work for you when built the way it is supposed to be. You may succeed in modifying it so it does work for you and find that it won't work without you. Or, again, you might be one of those who just “hasn't got it,” whatever “it” is, and isn't going to have it.
If you have good sense, you'll stay away from the field, because it's going to cost time, money and effort and its fascinating work.
In optics, the unsolved problem is how to build a ruling engine that can make perfect twelve-inch or larger diffraction gratings. A number of people have tried. The story has it that getting started on the job is fatal; people stop trying only when they are too broke to try any more.
The history of the psionic machine research is of that order. It's bad business to get started in it; people who have seem to be stuck with the research. It starts with a simple little contraption that produces weird and wonderful effects . . . very unreliably. Further research makes the contraption more complex, more reliable and more expensive.
Eventually, a stage is reached where it shows high reliability for its inventor and won't work for others. The original crude device usually works, unreliably of course, for many people. The reliable machine, however, works only for one.
I strongly recommend that you keep that fact in mind; the work evidently has a powerful tendency to draw in more and more of the researchers' attention and efforts. Keep away from it; it'll break you if you get started. But it is fascinating to read about.
If you readers indicate interest, I'll get hold of some articles on what has been and is being done. Before I do so, however, it is necessary that it be fully realized that such articles will, necessarily, discuss devices that:
Work unreliably, or work only under seemingly arbitrary conditions, and usually work only for one individual.
Of which it is claimed they do the obviously impossible.
Demonstrations can be reported, in which the obviously impossible, arrant nonsense, was seemingly demonstrated.
The explanations offered are inadequate, unconvincing, and cannot be verified by experiment.
But . . . devices which, developed by totally isolated individuals or groups, working without knowledge of each other, have nonetheless demonstrated similar impossible phenomena. For example, they agree in full with the law of Sympathetic Magic that a part of a thing is equal to the whole, and that what is done to an image of the thing is done to the whole. That things can be done to a photograph that affect the original of the picture.
Most of them combine light and electronics in their operation.
Most of the groups have started with very simple gadgets that can be homemade. They start off about as complex as an Ouija board, and wind up with an electro-optical bankruptcy device.
I think that's fair and honest warning. Honest and sincere work is being done; there are machines.
If you want, we can have reports on them. I can get reports written not by the people engaged in the work, but by someone who can make a simple statement of the physical structure of the device, where the inventor agrees, and a direct statement of demonstrations and claims made for it.
My personal hunch is that these individuals and groups are prodding at the edges of a new field that will open a totally new concept of the Universe. And that, within the next twenty years, the barrier will be cracked; a reproducible machine will be achieved when a valid theory of operation is achieved and not before. But I believe that that can be and will be done before 1975.
In the meantime, it might be interesting to see what sort of common principles are emerging from these amateur efforts toward a new field of science.
If you want a series of such reports, it's your right to indicate policy. I'll carry it out.
THE EDITOR
